THIS POST IS UNFINISHED. UNTIL THIS LABEL IS REMOVED, IT'S STILL NOT DONE.
UPDATE 4/30/18:
Been busy. School and my other 2 vehicles have been distracting me. I will be getting back to this project soon. No progress on the MS3 has been made since the thread was last updated, as it's all just physical stuff for the turbo build at the moment.
I'm currently going through the process of turbocharging my E34, and I decided to go the MS3 route. Thus far, all of the information on this conversion is kinda all over the place, so I wanted to document my whole experience here and try to make it easier for those going down the same path as I am.
This is just a placeholder for now while I get all of the information and form it into an easy to read guide for people who are new to this sort of work, or can't figure out how to wire up their MS3X from DIYAutoTune.
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Crediting
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To start, let me credit dburt86 for his help, and his own thread HERE. Goathumper too, as his thread HERE also had valuable information. I'm going to be using their information from their threads, and a few other sources.
Thanks Tone for the DME photos.
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Please read this
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Again, this is for DIYAutoTune's MS3X, which you can buy for $659.00 as of writing this right HERE (The SKU is MS3X357-C_BL in case you're wondering if you have the same unit). Also note that this is for OBDI cars with M50B25TU's in them. The guide can help with NV motors or M52 setups, but there will be differences.
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The setup in this guide is my going into my 1993 E34 525iT. The car originally came with an M50B25TU, and has been swapped to a M50B25NV out of an E36, is being turbocharged, and has been manual swapped.
Again, to make this very clear, this is on a factory automatic 1993 E34 525i touring with a production date of 10/14/1992. 413 "Red label" DME.
It has been manual swapped and has an M50B25NV from an E36. This means that from factory, the E34 was using Motronic 3.3.1 EFI. It still has the factory harness. The Motronic 3.3.1 harness.
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Motronic 3.1 was used with M50B25 engines, nicknamed the M50B25NV, or "non-vanos." This means it's the OBDI engines WITHOUT VANOS from 1991 to 1992.
Motronic 3.3.1 was used with M50B25TU engines. This means it's the OBDI engines WITH VANOS from 1993 to 1995. (Maybe OBDII as well? M52s?)
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M50B25NV's did not have knock sensors.
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THE DME PINOUTS ARE DIFFERENT BETWEEN THE MOTRONIC 3.1 AND MOTRONIC 3.3.1.
THIS GUIDE IS FOR FACTORY MOTRONIC 3.3.1 BMWs.
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Glossary
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DME : Your car's brain. Your BMW's management for engine functions. "Digital Motor Electronics."
Motronic 3.X : The system Bosch developed that DMEs use to control fuel injection and ignition.
PCB : Printed circuit board.
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What will you need?
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- The MS3X from DIYautotune. You can build one yourself for cheaper, but for $659 preassembled... It's probably not worth building it yourself. You can find it HERE.
- The "MSPiggy" or base female DB37 harness for the MS3 itself found HERE.
- The "MS3X-Piggy" or expansion board male DB37 hardness for the MS3's expansion board found HERE.
- Your factory DME, or a junkyard DME with a Bosch 88 Pin connector, that you will be cutting up unless you want to go with an adapter you will have to make yourself from DIYAT, which you can find HERE. (Just get this if you're afraid that you'll screw up your connector while trying to remove it from a DME.)
- Coil drivers. These can be found in your DME as well. Assuming that you go with your stock COPs.
- A Knock module for the MS3X. I highly highly recommend you get this thing because the MS3X alone doesn't read knock sensors. This will help with tuning, and could save your engine from blowing itself up if you happen to fill up with a bad tank of gas. You will need to disassemble your MS3X and solder it in manually. I'll showcase this later in the thread. You can find it HERE.
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The DME
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If you have coil drivers and the Bosch 88 pin connector already, then you can skip this section. If you want to keep your car's DME intact, I totally understand that. Go get a DME from any 6cyl E36 in a junkyard. Once you have it, you're going to want to pry it open. To do that, there are 6 tabs around the sides that you must pry up.
Once inside, you'll see this.
See that green thing around all of the pins hugging all 88 pins of the pain connector that's just above the motherboard?
Go ahead and carefully destroy it. If you can't, like I couldn't, then I would try to pry it up and away from the motherboard as much as possible without breaking or bending anything, and then snipping the longest pins at the PCB. Bend them up and away so you have more room to try and cut away and remove the green retainer. I wasn't able to fully remove it, but I managed to get the pins to bend at the base of the PCB, so I fatigued the metal by bending the 88 pin connector back and forth, eventually breaking it completely off of the PCB.
If you've done it right, then you should have something like this.
Next, you'll want the coil drivers. There are six. They're held against a long heatsink by a long golden retainer clip over the top.
Pry up on that using a small flat head screwdriver and pull it completely off. There will be some (probably yellow) plastic also running along the heatsink, but mine came off with the retainer. Remove that. Undo two of the torx screws under the DME to get the heatsink out. Once out, bend the coil drivers straight and cut their pins at the PCB. You'll need all 6. Two are on the outer side, and 4 are on the inner side.
Originally Posted by
dburt86
You can buy coil drivers from companies, i started with the DIYautotune Quad Spark boxes but found them to be too bulky for there own good, so i ended up using the stock BMW drivers. OBD1 and OBD2 drivers function the same, but the OBD2 drivers are smaller.
You should have this...
Once you do, properly dispose of the DME. You're done with it.
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The Knock Module
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I highly suggest you get this add-on. You'll have to disassemble your MS3 and solder it in manually. Here's how.
After being removed from the housing and removing both I/O covers, you'll want to remove the two ribbon cables from the white PCB that connects the MS3 expansion board to it. Set the expansion board aside. You should have something like this.
Obviously, you won't have the small blue PCB over the white one, since that's the knock module. You shouldn't have those orange wires either.
See the two screws holding down the white PCB to the larger blue one underneath it? Count the washers and make sure you remember their locations. Remove both screws and be careful with the washers. Don't lose them.
Pull up on the white PCB and separate it from the larger blue one. Once removed, put it aside.
Cut the wire that came with the knock module kit so that you have a index-finger-long piece. Then cut the remaining wire in half. You should have three now.
With the index-finger-long wire, solder it to the point labeled "PM2" on the knock module. Now take one end of one of the remaining orange wires and solder it through the hole labeled "K1" and do the same with the last wire but with "K2."
Now break apart the provided headers into two 3 pins and two single pins. Solder them on top of the white PCB into these locations...
Put the knock module on top of it, making sure the pins go through the PCB. Solder all 8 points into place. It should look like this...
Flip the white PCB and solder the other end of the PM2 wire, or the index-finger-long wire, to this pin.
You can place the white PCB back into place. Careful with the washers. Make sure that they're the right height and everything before you tighten down the PCB. If you don't, you risk breaking the PCB or not being able to close up your MS3's enclosure.
Once you're done there, now solder the other end of "K1" to "SPR3" on the big blue PCB, and "K2" to "SPR4." Make sure you don't wrap the wires under the larger blue PCB. If you do, you won't be able to slide your MS3 internals back into the enclosure. It should look like this...
Put the ribbon cables back on and slide the internals back into the enclosure after replacing the metal guards if they popped out of place. Yes, the expansion board just floats around. It has nothing to be held by except the ribbon cables. Put the screws back and tighten them up.
You're done. Now your MS3X is capable of reading two knock sensors.
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Wiring it up
(The fun part?)
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Here's where I'm gonna end the thread for now. I have to wire everything up and get it all working. Once I have that, I'll create my own diagrams and make everything easy to follow.
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